Sun/moon coincidence

One of the things I never really thought about, but learned recently. Perhaps this is obvious to many. The relative sizes of the sun and the moon, and their relative distances from earth make it possible for the moon to "almost" completely block out the sun during a total eclipse, allowing us to study the sun's corona. Of course if either the ratio of the sun's diameter to the moon's, or the ratio of their distances were different, then this would not happen. I find this a remarkable coincidence!

Staff: Mentor

I don't think its a remarkable coincidence more like a lucky coincidence. I'm sure if we lived on some other planet like Mars this wouldn't happen and so we'd use scientific methods to study the corona as is used today in our solar telescopes.

Yes, it is a remarkable coincidence, but keep in mind that it's only temporary, because the Moon is moving away from the Earth. A billion years ago, the Moon looked larger than the Sun, and a billion years from now, the Moon will look smaller.

One of the things I never really thought about, but learned recently. Perhaps this is obvious to many. The relative sizes of the sun and the moon, and their relative distances from earth make it possible for the moon to "almost" completely block out the sun during a total eclipse, allowing us to study the sun's corona. Of course if either the ratio of the sun's diameter to the moon's, or the ratio of their distances were different, then this would not happen. I find this a remarkable coincidence!

You may have to change your definition to match your meaning.
:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse
A 'total eclipse' is when the silhouette of the moon entirely blocks the disc of the sun, a annular eclipse is when the silhouette doesn't quite block the sun leaving a sun sized ring. Because the earths distance to both the sun and the moon vary independently from each other, there are times when the moon appears larger in the sky, and times when the sun will appear larger in the sky giving the different type of eclipses.

What amazes me is the fact that the moon keeps one 'side' perpetually facing the earth - meaning it exactly performs one revolution every time it circles our planet. Apart from the mind-boggling chance of this, not only happening but being maintained, what possible cause could there be for it holding this position - in spite of asteroid impacts, irregularities in orbit etc?

Staff: Mentor

What amazes me is the fact that the moon keeps one 'side' perpetually facing the earth - meaning it exactly performs one revolution every time it circles our planet. Apart from the mind-boggling chance of this, not only happening but being maintained, what possible cause could there be for it holding this position - in spite of asteroid impacts, irregularities in orbit etc?

That's anything but a coincidence. It's called tidal locking. There are lots of moons that are tidally locked. If you extend the meaning of the concept, Mercury in a sense is tidally locked, too. Mercury is in a 3:2 resonance rather than a 1:1 resonance, but because of the eccentricity of Mercury's orbit, that 3:2 resonance is energetically more favorable than would be a (strictly speaking) 1:1 tidal lock.